I am a big fan of God and I
have no apprehensions about expressing that.
The grace of God has been a blessing in my life more than I may be aware
of. In Rick Warren’s famous book The Purpose Driven Life he says that a
person can bring glory to God in the most diminutive of ways; like washing ones
car or mopping a floor. I agree with
that idea. My mind is continuously on
God as I attempt to bring glory to the Higher Power because of the compassion,
love, and grace that I have been shown from Him/Her.
I could go on and on about
God’s beauty and how much I am in debt to it.
However, I find it fascinating that people endear God for showing divine
grace while ignoring His/Her egalitarian display of supreme grim. It is not necessarily the true essence of God
that fascinates me as much as it is the man’s erroneous ideas and teachings of God.
One of my colleagues proposed a question: is man created in the image of God or has man created [a] God in the
image of man? Great question. OSHO used to talk about how people wrongly
give God a personality. I am not a
believer that God has a personality. I
believe that God is an energy force that encompasses all beings and things;
past, present, and future. God
encompasses what we can and cannot see.
To me, God is an unexplainable experience that cannot be accurately
described by humans; it can only be explored.
God is an energy force that the brain is not equipped to fully process
and a force that is outside of the humans ability to completely
understand. With that stated, in my
opinion (and in layman’s terms) – God is light…and dark, good…and evil,
empathetic…and apathetic, caring…and uncaring, compassionate…and unfeeling, and
everything else in between. But for some
reason, most people only see God as good, empathetic, loving, compassionate,
etc. Another majority (but smaller
cohort) of people may have become aware of, through unfavorable experiences, God’s
dark and unfeeling side – and as a result have chosen to distance themselves
from Him/Her. Perhaps this is how some people
may become atheist. They cannot
understand how a God who is perceived as loving could be so cruel. Then, there is a third group of people (a
minority – of which I would include myself) who sees God as a neutral force that
exercises and embodies the full continuum of opposites. People with this PerspectVe do not see God as
a being who picks a side. Instead, God
encompasses both sides with no Satan existing; only an expression of thyself on
a continuum.
I have been the victim of various
traumatic experiences in my life and I have been the orchestrator and actor of
traumatic experiences in the lives of others.
Even with a history of aggression and violence, people have still described
me as a good person, but there have
been several times in my life when I have not done good things. I believe that
I am a decent person who strives to be as moral as humanly possible but who is
also capable of immoral things. When you
look at the previous three PerspectVe’s of God that I offered and which one I
relate to, you may see why someone like me using the phrase, I am created in God’s image, would give
me reason to be at peace with myself.
Whether I am at my best or at my worse, I am behaving as a fractal of God – on the continuum. This is a very subjective idea because I
believe God to be both gracious and grim. For example, at the expense of Job’s life,
look at how God rolled the dice and gambled with Satan. Carl Jung writes:
“Job is robbed of his herds, his servants are
slaughtered, his sons and daughters are killed by a whirlwind, and he himself
is smitten with sickness and brought to the brink of the grave…One must bear in
mind here the dark deeds that follow one another in quick succession: robbery,
murder, bodily injury, with premeditation, and denial of a fair trial. This is further exacerbated by the fact that
[God] displays no compunction, remorse, or compassion, but only ruthlessness
and brutality. The plea of
unconsciousness is invalid, seeing that [H]e flagrantly violates at least three
of the commandments [H]e [H]imself gave out on Mount Sinai…The only dark thing
here is how [God] ever came to make a bet with Satan,” (C.G.Jung, 1952) .
This passage reminds me of
Reverend Ike’s statement during one of his sermons when he said, “The Lord
doesn’t care about you. The law of the
Lord has no respect for the person.” I
could not agree more with Jung regarding God’s capability of being dark. However, I am not convinced that His/Her dark
side is senseless as Jung appears to be eluding to in one of his literary pieces
titled Answer to Job. Jung makes the argument that what God did to
Job was a senseless act based out of God’s own insecurities and need to prove
Satan wrong. I believe that an
all-knowing God had a bigger purpose than to prove Satan wrong. I believe that God uses His/Her dark side for
the benefit of the universe to move forward, regardless of the expense of
humans and things. I would even go as
far as saying that God’s allowance of evil as well as His/Her own darkness is
usually, if not – always for the benefit of moving the universe towards
improvement. Thus, the act itself may be
perceived to be worse than the intention of God. This can also be a difficult concept to grasp
because it is difficult for people to see the value in harm when they are the
victims of it.
I understand that it can be
alarming and fearful to think of God in these non-traditional ways but, to have
a one-sided view of the Divine may be an integral ingredient of human pathology. What else might you be looking at
one-sided? As a mental health practitioner, I meet with
clients who only see the problems in their lives as problems but do not
recognize the gifts that their problems can bring. They are looking at the situation one-sided. Thinking that Satan is responsible for your
stress is one side but what if God is deliberately doing these things to you [for
a greater good in your life]? Jung eludes
to this idea of a Satan-free world when he writes, “Job…expected help from God
against God. This most peculiar fact
presupposes a similar conception of the opposites in God,” (C.G.Jung, 1952) .
In the grand scheme of things there is a great possibility that in order
for beings and things to continue to grow, God must be both gracious and grim.
#ExpandYourPerspectVe
WWW.PERSPECTVE.COM / PERSPECTVELLC@YAHOO.COM
© 04/26/2016 PersepctVe LLC
References
C.G.Jung.
(1952). PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION: WEST AND EAST. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.
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